Conventionally, there exist load distributed printing systems which distribute a printing load among a plurality of inexpensive medium-speed printing apparatuses and cause them to operate in parallel to implement high-speed printing at a low cost instead of executing mass printing by using one high-speed mass printing apparatus, when it is necessary to print documents in a large quantity.
When a plurality of printing apparatuses are operated in parallel, the load concentrates at a specific printing apparatus. To solve this problem, various techniques to make efficient use of a plurality of printing apparatuses have been proposed (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-259206).
However, the conventional print system represented by Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 06-259206 does not consider a case in which, after a print job is transmitted to a printing apparatus, an error occurs in the printing apparatus. In addition, if an error occurs in a print device, a print job which has already been output to the print device is not printed until recovery of the print device is effected by the operator. If another device is executing automatic “redirect on error” printing, the sequence of printing is not guaranteed.